The December Loneliness No One Posts About: Liberate Yourself from the Myth That Everyone Else Is Happy

December is a strange month.
The lights get brighter, the music gets louder, and somehow… the loneliness gets heavier.
We scroll through holiday photos, family gatherings, matching pajamas, and glittery city streets — and a quiet thought creeps in:

“Is it just me?”
“Why does everyone else look so happy?”
“Why does this month hit so hard?”

But here’s the truth we don’t see online:
December is one of the loneliest months of the year, not because we’re doing something wrong, but because everything around us is amplified, joy and pain, connection and isolation, presence and absence.

And for many, the heaviness has roots that started long before adulthood.

💔 Childhood Roots

For a lot of us, the holidays were never simple.
Maybe there were fights.
Maybe people were missing.
Maybe love felt conditional.
Maybe you grew up feeling out of place at your own family table.
Maybe Christmas meant performing, being cheerful, grateful, polite, even when your heart was tired.

Your nervous system remembers all of that.

So when December arrives, it doesn’t just bring lights.
It brings echoes.

🔁 Adult Patterns

As adults, we carry those old roles into new Decembers:

• You overextend yourself so no one feels disappointed.
• You smile even when you feel disconnected.
• You say yes to events you don’t actually want to attend.
• You compare your real life to everyone else’s highlight reel.
• You wonder why something feels “off” even though everything looks “fine.”

And the loneliness grows, not because you’re alone,
but because you’re unseen, even in the middle of people.

🛋️ A Real Moment From Therapy

A client once told me:
“December makes me feel like there’s something wrong with me. Everyone else is happy, and I’m… tired.”

I asked, “But are they happy? Or are they performing the same way you’ve been trained to perform?”

She paused and said, “Oh. Maybe no one knows what they’re doing either.”

Exactly.

December exposes the places where we’ve been pretending.
It invites us to stop performing and start telling the truth.

💸 The Hidden Cost of Pretending

Pretending you’re okay when you’re not comes with a price:

• Exhaustion
• Resentment
• Emotional numbness
• Feeling disconnected from yourself
• Feeling like your life is lacking something everyone else has

But the hardest part?
You abandon yourself in the process.

What Liberation Looks Like

Liberation isn’t about loving December.
It’s about not abandoning yourself inside of it.

Liberation sounds like:

“I don’t have to feel how everyone else feels.”
“I can show up softly, quietly, honestly.”
“I can say no without guilt.”
“I can choose the people who feel safe, not the ones who feel obligated.”
“I’m allowed to have a complicated holiday season.”
“I’m not the only one feeling this.”

And my favorite lesson from my book, F*ck You All, Chill, Jesus Is Coming Soon*:
Not everyone deserves a front-row seat — especially in December.

Pocket Practice of the Week

A 60-second grounding ritual for December loneliness:

1️⃣ Put one hand on your heart.
2️⃣ Breathe in for 4, hold for 2, and exhale for 6.
3️⃣ Whisper to yourself:
“I am not broken. I am not behind. I will get through this month.”
4️⃣ Ask yourself:
“What do I need more of? What do I need less of?”
5️⃣ Give yourself one tiny act of comfort today; warmth, rest, music, prayer, sunlight, stillness.

Small rituals save us.

With Love and Light,

Luz

If This Spoke to You…

If this blog resonates, or you think someone you love might need these words today,
please forward it to them. A lot of people feel alone in December, sometimes all it takes is one honest message to remind them they’re not.